After getting hit in the back by a baseball Boston Red Sox left fielder Alex Verdugo exchanges words with fans. Red Sox first base coach Tom Goodwin left talks things over with Verdugo during the sixth inning incident from Sat Jul 17, 2021 game at Yankee Stadium in New York (AP News photo)

Baseball: Ban a Fan for Life?

That’s Amaury News and Commentary

By Amaury Pi-González

This Saturday, at Yankee Stadium in New York, in the bottom of the sixth inning, a fan in the left field stands threw a baseball at Boston Red Sox left-fielder Alex Verdugo.

The ball hit the player, but he was not hurt. According to Verdugo he threw the ball to a young Red Sox fan (players do this regularly, the kid wants a ball…) but somebody, a Yankee fan, intercepted the ball and threw it back intentionally at Alex Verdugo. The fan was removed from the stadium, but not arrested. The game was called during that same inning due to heavy rain and the Yankees won 3 to 1.

The Yankees will not allow that fan to ever enter Yankee Stadium again in his lifetime, and that is the correct action by the team. But how can baseball enforced a ban for such a person for all parks in major league baseball? That is not easy to do. All parks have cameras installed in different places.

They would have to scan every face that comes into the gates and then compare it to a data computer, which will match that face with the person that was banned. Some parks might need more cameras to be installed, more money, and more security. Still many people in the past have found the way to sneak back into a park after they were thrown out.

This is done in gaming establishments, in Las Vegas and other places, for different reasons, well know cheaters who are regularly banned from these gambling places. But inside a stadium during an event where there might be 40,000 people or more?

More than likely this man attending the game at Yankee Stadium will be hiring an attorney, to protect his rights, as guilty as he looks to be (and they are plenty of people that were seated around him who witnessed his reckless act) still, everybody in this country has rights and you are ‘innocent until you are proven guilty’. The incident was caught on cameras televising the game, not to mention in probably many phone cameras that were held by fans in that area.

Overall, I agree a fan who intentionally tries to hurt a player during a game; by throwing an object (a ball in this case) should be removed banned from that park and other baseball parks, but a lifetime ban, that’s another story. That is not an easy task. Should MLB/teams fine the fan for thousands of dollars for an intentionally violent act? Let’s face it, what this man did was an unprovoked assault. Why wasn’t he arrested or a police report filed?

I am sure we will learn more about this particular incident. The passion between the biggest rivalry in baseball and one of the tops in all sports, Yankees vs. Red Sox, should still continue. The vast majority of fans behave at a park, but in the violent world we are living today, we cannot dismiss such action.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the lead Spanish play by play announcer for Oakland A’s flagship station 1010 KIQI LeGrande San Francisco and does News and Commentary at http://www.sportsradioservice.com